


stygian

by possiblyfictional



Series: Angsty Rambles [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Dreams and Nightmares, Everyone is Dead Because Supernatural Doesn't Keep Anyone Alive for Long, Nightmares, Other, my children, this is just sad stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possiblyfictional/pseuds/possiblyfictional
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>adjective<br/>sty·gian  \ˈsti-j(ē-)ən\<br/>1:  of or relating to the river Styx or to Hades.<br/>2:  dark or gloomy.<br/>3:  infernal; hellish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stygian

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by A Quiet Darkness by Houses.

Their nightmares had stopped being about blood and torture and horror a long while ago.

Yes, there were times when one would startle awake, expecting fire and flames to be consuming them. Those were few and far between.

That doesn’t mean the nightmares stopped, or became any less potent. It just meant that they were different now.

These nights, Sam dreams of Jess less often than he used to. He still finds the occasional image of her burning above him, eyes black, tear streaks on her cheeks. Once in a blue moon, it’s a dream of the life they could have had, and sometimes it’s ruined with a sudden dread-colored twist in his dreamscape. And, yes, there are dreams of Dean and Cas dying, another endless string of Tuesdays with no escape in sight, another helpless moment of Castiel’s wings being torn apart, feather by feather. Occasionally, he even dreams of himself dying, tortured, beaten, in the Cage again.

Now, however, these dreams are not so common. For Sam, he dreams of his brother’s dead body, and the times when Dean is gone and Sam calls out to him, his mind believing that other man would return his shout with a grin. He dreams of waking up to find he is the only one of his family left. He dreams that Cas leaves, human again, and suffers. After a while, Sam had been informed of what had happened to Cas while he was human, and he dreams of the nights Cas spent alone. He dreams he can’t help anyone, although he wants to.

Sam decided that his subconscious was a dark place some time ago, but rare are the times he says anything about it, unless it’ll help the mission he and Dean are on. Otherwise, he stays silent, sleepless.

Dean is in as much of a mess as Sam. Yet, unlike Sam, he’s just used to it. Ever since Dean was a child nightmares taunted him, whispered horrors to him as he slept. He was used to the dreams where gore and pain and suffering pull him apart from the inside out.

These new dreams were strange, different, and he hated them deeply. He doesn’t always remember what haunts his subconscious, like Sam usually does, but the fragments he can remember aren’t bloody anymore.

No, they usually consist of watching Sam drift away, fade from existence, transparent but happier than ever before. These days, the nightmares are about Cas, watching him chase Dean deeper and deeper into a world full of toxic substances and demons and people ready to kill Cas in a heartbeat. In this world, there are monsters ready to strip away the angel's humanity and happiness, leaving nothing but an empty husk behind that was once a home of a bright light in the darkness. He dreams of grabbing Sam, holding onto him, not letting him go and watching Sam crack under the pressure, under the binding that Dean tied around him to keep him from leaving, the ropes and handcuffs leaving raw, red skin. He dreams of a life where Dad didn’t believe in monsters, and he watches as demons, Meg and Ruby and Azazel and Lilith, tear his family apart, from Mom’s ghost to Sam’s young eyes to Dad’s courage, ripping it apart at the seams, watching the stitches rip and none of them knowing why.

Dean takes medicine to knock him out and keep him from remembering his dreams.

Cas doesn’t sleep, although sometimes he wants to, but Dean wouldn’t like that. However, he continues to still when he remembers the dreams he had as a human.

Many consisted of white, holy pillars crashing down, black wings shaking under the force of a thousand leagues of angels screaming, Sam and Dean fighting an endless army that never ceases, all of them running and hiding and suffering.

There were other dreams, too, of a much more simple concept.

A dream that had often returned was one where Sam and Dean never came back for him, and Cas lost the two best friends he ever had to live in poverty. He’d live in the back of that store forever until he became an old man and couldn’t live on his own, and then he’d be forgotten until death, when he’d wake up with a chill in his bones and an ache in his heart.

Cas knows he'll never grow used to nightmares. He knows that Sam and Dean suffer from them as well. He knows they don't know what to do with the monsters in their head, either.


End file.
